Griot sundiata keita biography
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Sundiata
The Hero's Journey: Sundiata
Interview with Edan Dekel
This interview with Edan Dekel analyzes the Sundiata epic through the lens of the Hero's Journey.
Storyteller
How was the epic transmitted?
How do we know about Sundiata Keita, the historical person?
How is the epic transmitted in African languages today?
Although the oral poems of the people of Mali are our best source of information about Sundiata, we have independent evidence of his life and reign through Arab travellers such as the great Ibn Batutta who visited Mali in However, even Ibn Batutta claims that Sundiata lived more than a hundred years before his visit, so we must assume that his sources were also part of the oral tradition.
Today, the story of Sundiata is found not only among his native Mandinka people, but throughout the entire Mandingo language group which is spoken in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, and Gambia. The main vehicle for the transmission of this story is the profession
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Sundiata Keita
Sundiata Keita was the first ruler of the Mali Empire from C.E. to C.E. Sundiata Keita, whose name means Lion Prince, was born early in the 13th century to a noble family within the Malinke people. The Malinke kingdom, Kangaba, was part of the Ghana empire of West Africa. Oral stories about Keita say that he was a sickly child or suffered from some sort of physical impairment. This explains why, when his brothers were killed by the rulers of Ghana, he was spared. Eventually, he became a local leader of the kingdom of Kangaba.
When the Ghana Empire tried to impose trade restrictions on the Malinke, Keita began a revolt. He managed to unite several peoples of West Africa to fight against Ghana's king, Sumanguru; he defeated Sumanguru at the battle of Kirina in C.E. After that, Keita’s generals began to conquer other territories in West Africa. He called his new kingdom the Mali Empire, which would become one of the richest empires in the world.
Keita’s victory o
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ADF STAFF
I teach kings the history of their förfäder, so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old, but the future springs from the past.
Those are the words of griot, or berättare, Djeli Mamadou Kouyaté, in the opening part of a spoken history of Sundiata Keita, the first ruler of the Mali Empire. The spoken history, passed down by Mandinka griots for years, fryst vatten called Epic of Sundiata.
No oral history is completely accurate, but the epic is supported in part by the writings of Muslim travelers who visited the empire, in what is now Mali and Senegal.
The epic begins about A.D., with a prophecy that greatness would komma to a descendant of a ledare named Maghan Kon Fatta. But the prophecy could only be fulfilled if the ledare married a particularly ugly woman. When two hunters presented a hunchbacked woman with “monstrous” eyes to Maghan Kon Fatta’s court, he remembered the prophecy and took the “buffalo woman” as his second wife. In